preggo update: 9 months

nine months!! can you believe it! it is hard to imagine sweet ellery will be here so soon, but we are just about ready for her. a last few purchases of diapers and wipes and this little girl's home is all set for her arrival!

many people have been asking lately, "wait, you're nine months? so why is your due date not until december 2nd?" well, what a lot of people don't know is the medical world plays a trick on you. you sneaky doctors. pregnancy isn't just 36 weeks, it goes all the way to 40 weeks. so, as of November 4th, i was 9 months along, but i could still be pregnant at 10 months, or even past that! (which is very common for first pregnancies). though now that i am 37 weeks pregnant, i am considered full-term and ellery is good to come out now whenever she's ready! (though she seems to be having a lot of fun in there pushing and squirming around. i'm sure she'll be a little sad to leave her cozy little home that's getting even smaller by the day!)

this past monday we went to the doctor for our check-up. now we'll be going in once a week until i go into labor. at this last appointment, the doctor checked me and i was 50% effaced and 1cm dilated! it was so exciting to know that the process is starting for ellery to be here! and though i am dilated, it could still be all the way to or past my due date until i'm ready for labor. or it could happen quickly (a lot of family members have guessed a thanksgiving baby!) ideally, dr. mccann said i would want to come in each week and be one more cm dilated. but you never know what will happen!

also, as dr. mccann was checking her heartbeat, i had a contraction! in my weekly email updates, it would say my contractions should be a bit stronger now... well, until that point i hadn't felt any contractions, so i wondered when they would start happening. little did i know, i was having them but couldn't feel them at all! when he told me i was having one, i thought it was just baby girl pushing out her bottom really hard :) he said that is what could have started it, but then the whole uterus contracted, making my whole belly harder. i have noticed several since but don't have any pain or discomfort associated with them!

other than that, i have been in total nesting/get things ready mode. every day, kyle comes home and a new drawer is cleaned out or something is moved around in the nursery. he always says he wishes he could harness my nesting powers and save them up for when i'm not pregnant! but he has been a HUGE help lately, especially with "handy man" projects around the nursery. (just you wait... the nursery post is coming up next. we're excited to show you how it turned out!!) it's been fun getting the last minute stuff ready together - freezing dinners, deciding on cloth vs disposable diapers (i think we'll start off doing both, then ease into the whole cloth diapering world), packing our bags for the hospital, coming up with a birth plan and filling out ellery's form for her birth certificate. we even have the car seat installed in my car. all we need is this little girl!

i have loved being pregnant, and i really think in some ways i will miss it. though, i know i will quickly learn nothing will compare to having ellery in our arms! the past nine months have been filled with so many sweet moments, so i wanted to leave you with one that happened last week:

as we were leaving our last doctor's appointment, we were talking about how excited and somewhat surprised we were that i was dilated, even just a little bit. kyle looked at me and said, "to know that we're going to actually have a baby soon, to imagine ellery here with us, it just makes my heart flutter. i'm so excited!"

me too hubby.